Hornet - Bitfenix Raider with Water Build (New HD pix)

[Snugluge]

Originally Posted by Creekin

they are a bit fast imho
sub 1000rpm works best with low fpi
doesnt matter if u have a controller
but why buy fast fans and a controller and load it up all the time when u can just get the right fans for the rad and run them @100% 24/7?
thats just my mad opinion though
nothing wrong with them


I have these in 120 and 140
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=15399

Me likes

[Brianf1971]

Message to Creekin, is that getting on with it?

This is a big long winded update, sorry for my ramblings but wanted to detail all I could for those who might be thinking of similar project and for my own reference

Ok so lets go through the steps I followed,

1. Masked off entire top with painters masking tap

Next 3 Steps jut like POC pictures show

2. Removed the top panel PCB's.
3. Put Rad on top of the case and placed top on.
4. Push rad all the way back from inside the case.
5. Removed the lid carefully so rad doesn't shift.
6. Mark the hole positions front and back both sides.
7. Lined up template printed from http://www.mnpctech.com/Radiator_Grill_Templates.html using a square to align the fan holes with what I marked from the rad


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Ok Now it's lined up lets get the Dremel/drill and hole cutter fired up


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After rough cuts and holes drilled, put rad back on and put some screws through, then using a sharpie I traced around the outlets, then put a fitting over to check size.

Got out the hole cutter and cut a rough hole this will get cleaned up with round file.


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Sorry for the blurry pic, hands a bit shaky by this stage, but you get the idea, I also cut slots for the front panel cables, and the drill holes in the front middle (bottom of pic) are for a cable tie so USB can be looped up and passed around back, they may not be in line but that's OK they actually are under the end tank of rad so cannot be seen.

The big holes in the corners are for the tube/fittings to pass through remember this rad is cross-flow.

OK so now out came the files and cleaned all this up and removed burrs, came out pretty good but forgot to take pic sorry .

By this stage it's late Saturday nigh so time to give neighbours a rest, I had gone through all my cutting disks half way through so made a trip to Bunnings and picked up some more, have plenty now for tomorrow

Sunday Morning, bugger eldest has soccer, there goes half the day, anyway, got back and straight back into it.

Next job is fitting front Rad, I decided not to cut out the mesh as I was worried that with the weight being suspended from the bottom that it might pull through, plus the mesh is pretty open anyway.

While there are 2 x 120mm Fan mounts in the front I need to remove the drive bays to get at them, easy enough 1/8 drill bit and 30sec later their out


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Placed Rad in front, and wouldn't you know it holes are slightly out, no problem I needed to cut a hole in the bottom for the drain port in the rad anyway, now just a bigger hole.


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I'm an idiot in my haste I lined up back of rad hole but guessed how far forward, I had to cut again this time much closer to the front sorry no pic but you get the idea, I had to cut up to about 5mm from the front of case this time.


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Grabbed a fan and ....


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Much easier then the top (minus by lazy mistake)

Now I have 2 Issues, I though the cross-flow was a great idea, nice circular loop, and having the front rad multiport meant I should be able to join straight up, well I outsmarted myself (did anyone see the issue in the previous pics?)

Yep that's right there are 2 problems.

Problem 1

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Bad pic I know but rad inlet/outlets don't line up, I should be able to fix this with triple rotary 90 and small adapter if I can screw then together that is.

Problem 2

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Bit hard to see but rear connection comes out in line with I/O shield, no where to go, my solution is I will order a rotary 90 and a long adapter or 2 to raise it up to where the outlet would be if this was not a cross-flow, then I can connect to CPU block, well time to make another order I guess.

OK now to make my drive bay, pretty easy, just cut bottom off drive bay cage and file

Now that I have all my main cuts done in time to test fit to find if I have any more issues.


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Rads in (check)
Top on (check)
Drive bay in (check)
Res/Pump in (check)

All looking good, lets move on to building up system


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Motherboard in (check)
Power supply in (check)
Graphics card (fail )

As you can see the 7970 card while not being the biggest, is big enough to cause me grief (should have gone Nvidia 670 would fit great).

Note : when I was planning this build I had 2 x HD7770's they are much shorter and would fit great, but I got bitten by the eyefinity bug and upgraded a couple of weeks ago to the 7970, was contemplating crossfire, but guess thats out of the question unless I can redo things a bit.

It's too long to fit in the top 16x slot (hits the pump top), and moving it down means the heatsink/fan is in the way of the drive bay, so I'll have to comprise for now until I figure if there is another solution, once I get a block for the 7970 the drive bays will fit fine.

OK so there is where the build is at now


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I now need to make another order hopefully once I get the rest of my parts I just need to flush everything and setup the loop.

I will post an update sometime in the next week or so, depends on when parts arrive.

Please let me know what you think, if I'm dribbling too much, or not enough, and if anyone out there has had to solve the issues I have any have another method to share that would be great, anyway nuff now.

Brian

[Brianf1971]

OK I rejigged the res mount today and now the GPU is back in the top slot, a second card can also fit later, I will need to block the GPU before I can install the drive bay as that heatsink shroud sticks out heaps, once done I can move the res up enough to get the bay in.


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Got a delivery today

Fans, some fittings, tube, and Raystorm block almost there

Have order some QDC to allow me to drain the res/cpu,gpu part of the loop, the front rad has a drain so bot Rads can be drained via that.

I have also ordered barbs to see if I can use these to join the Rad's, and a 90 which will go on the front rad to join the pump, the 45 I have on it now will move to the top rad at the back to allow the tube to point to the CPU.

I have also started working on designing the side panel, please excuse the 30sec rough mspaint diagram,


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That's it so far, please leave comments/suggestions all appreciate

Brian

[Brianf1971]

Ok have finally ordered what I hope is the solution to the issue of connecting the rads,

http://www.thekoolroom.com/product/b...l-g14-adapter/

I had a Triple rotary 90 and it lines up exact but doesn't have thread on both ends, this should now solve my final problem as I have already ordered extension for the back, now hopefully all parts arrive by Friday and I will be swimming by the weekend

Quick update 3/8 all parts have now arrived to cross fingers CPU loop Pics by Sunday

[Brianf1971]

CPU Loop is done, very happy with the result, loving how quite the system is and so far how cool it it, just sorting things out and will be posting Pics shortly

[Brianf1971]

Hi Guys well I'm up and running and very happy, so far things are going well, a few drama's during the loop but not that bad really, I had a couple of leaks but I was so paranoid that I didn't have anything in at the time so all good, I actually had more problems with the system rebuild then the waterloop but more on that late, for now I'll show you how things went

Firstly and prob the most difficult problem to solve was how to join the Rad's, they were too close together for compression fittings(they actually would touch each other if they were in line), Barbs were no go because they were offset, so my solution was a tipple rotary 90 adapter (threads at both ends), that in itself wasn't without problems, while it lined up perfectly the problem I had was doing it up, the top rad as you know goes through a hole in the top of the case therefore I could not get fingers in there, and the bottom rad would turn the whole fitting every time I tried, my solution was to tighten the fitting to the top of the front rad, then use a fan to prop the front rad up so the connector poked out and then spin the whole top rad onto the fitting until it was tight worked a treat, I then connected a 90 to the back of the top rad, removed the fan and dropped bot rads into place, they lined up perfectly see below


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I then tubed up the loop, my original plan was to use Quick Disconnects for draining the bottom part of the loop between the CPU and pump, and drain the rads via the drain/fill plug on the bottom of the front rad.

On my first fill everything was looking fine at first then I noticed a leak, checked and it was the fitting to the front rad from the pump, it was then I noticed I'd cut the tube too short and it was pulling off, so I had to drain to replace, I put the case over the edge of the table, held a container under the drain port and unscrewed it, woosh the water flowed out really fast bit of a splash but nothing major, it was then I noticed the suction actually emptied the entire loop, bonus no need for the QDC's, I replaced the short tube and removed the QDC's, I have heard these can be restrictive so I decided if not needed leave them out.

Filled again and bugger me another leak, this time it was the pump, I drained again and took the pump off the top, looked fine but O ring stayed inside the top, I put the O ring back on the pump and tightened.

I refilled the loop and this time no leaks


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By this time it was getting late after bleeding and leak checking for about 30min I added the liquid utopia and headed off to bed leaving the system to continue to bleed.

When I got up this morning I checked the system it was dead quiet, I though it had switched off but no it was running, the pump had cleared most of the bubbles overningh and was now quiet as I was really impressed haveing left it running at 5 last night I though it was a little noisy and I'd have to turn it down, well not needed

I then installed the Motherboard and mounted the Raystorm, this was a little difficult to do as the backing plate has tiny double sided tape about 1-2mm around the mounting holes only, not enough to keep it in place, so I had to hold one side while putting bolts in, I called my daughter over to help and manged to get the first two to catch at that point it was easy enough to get the other 2 in and tighten it down, add the Led's (becuse I was dying to see what it looked like, flipped the switch and....


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Great now all I have to do is put everything back together and add the 7970, did this pretty quickly flipped the switch and...


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All was looking great so I then moved it back on to my desk, connected the drives, monitors, sound keyboard and mouse, flipped the switch and.....

Nothing , well actually there was activity I got lights, could hear the drives spin up and after about 10sec heard the familiar windows startup sound, bugger not display

All I hoped was that my 7970 wasn't dead, I remounted it, nothing
I then changed the PCIe cables, nothing.
I then connected to onboard vid and check the BIOS, it reported no card in the slot, bugger
So I grabbed one of my spare GPU's and installed that, still nothing, getting worried I'd stuffed the PCIe lanes somehow even though I was careful and have done this thousands of times.
At this point I remembered reading that there were reports of the Raystorm back plate causing shorts, so I removed it checked and there was nothing that could be making contact, I re-installed this time unaided was a bit easier this time.
Booted up and .... Nothing, now I'm getting

I connected to the onboard again and checked, still no card in slot, so I decided to reset CMOS to defaults, save and restarted .......

My two outside monitors came to life, they are connected to the 7970, excellent, connected the middle screen back to the 7970, booted into windows and all was good.

Moral of the story, don't overthink a problem try a BIOS reset first and save yourself some time

So I am now able to upload my pics and do some testing, I can tell you I have already noticed a 5c drop on idle and a 20c drop under load, that is with the fans turned down so you cannot hear them, turning the fans up doesn't affect idle but at load shaves another 5c, I haven't done hours of testing yet but 20-30min worth shows a great improvement, I am really happy

I will be doing some testing over the coming week or so to see if I can hit 5Ghz, I will keep you posted for now I'm going to relax and enjoy the new system, have a good one

Brian

[Brianf1971]

5Ghz has been reached at 85c Max

CPUZ : http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2462144

3DMark 11 : TBA

Brian

[Timbojones0123]

Nice job on the whole thing man. Gratz on getting 5ghz..

Heat can be a real issue with the 3570k but luckly you got water cooling. :P

[Brianf1971]

Originally Posted by Timbojones0123

Nice job on the whole thing man. Gratz on getting 5ghz..

Heat can be a real issue with the 3570k but luckly you got water cooling. :P

Thanks mate

[Brianf1971]

I have now settled on stable overclocks for CPU and GPU

as a result my 3dmark 11 score is now 10415 http://3dmark.com/3dm11/4056057, and vantage score is http://3dmark.com/3dmv/4226420

Update: After some tweaking new 3dmark score of 10518 http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4078752

[Brianf1971]

Quick Update :

I will be going on a holiday shortly until End of August so not much is going to happen before then as I have work and home priorities, however I have placed some orders and plan to have parts ready to go on my return.

Now for a checklist of what is yet to come

1. GPU Block installed on the 7970 and tubed up.
2. Final placement of Res and lighting it up.
3. Drive bay mod & install.
4. Bottom Fan Mod.
5. Lighting - Will be adding UV as well as testing the RGB remote controlled lights I have.
6. Side Panel Windows (M/Board area & separate Res area), with Carbon Wrap.
7. Take some decent final Pics

Have a good one.

Brian

[Brianf1971]

Quick Update time now I'm back from Holidays

Have decided it's a bit boring and needs some bling, therefore loop has been redesigned to cause churn in the res, the main reason for this is I am going to use dye (I know old school watercoolers are going to say noooooo, but I am willing to strip and clean the loop it's one of those things I want to try out and have given in), stay tuned all parts including GPU block are on their way and this will be the heatkiller with backplate.

I am also toying with the idea of rotating the M/Board so that it faces downwards and putting the GPU on an extender so that it lies flat against the board showing off it's copper and stainless beauty.

I will obviously need to cover the bottom with a shaped plate to hide the connectors and slots for up to 3 cards are being planned, the only thing that has me second guessing this design is how it limits future upgrades.

For now I'm going to redo and complete the loop and see if I'm happy before I look at rotation, I am hoping all parts arrive this week and this weekend I can complete the new loop.

Brian

[Brianf1971]

Finally parts have arrived look forward to the weekend so I can finish this off, expect updates on Sunday.

Brian

[Brianf1971]

Focused on loop today, ended up changing res as original idea of using 3 way on top of res, cause fill issues, got a EK Multioption 150 Advanced and connected that to pump top this is the result. (really handy to have local water cooling shop)


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More to come but really happy with the way Arora looks, just waiting to see how long before the pearls get stuck, really had a good time with the build and happy so far.

Note : EK Multioption Top will not fit Koolance 60mm Res (thread size issues), however res body will fit onto the koolance COV-RP450 pump top.
Top empty tube is fill port and will be relocated.

Brian

[Brianf1971]

Quick vid showing Aurora in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCz6tMeQRL0